Edna May Prigmore Milligan

Edna May Prigmore Milligan
A Brief History Written by Herself


Date of Birth: May 2, 1917
Place of Birth: Farmington, Utah
Parents: Charles Henry and Bertha Windross Prigmore
Spouse: Horace James Milligan
Date of Marriage: November 20, 1946
Children: Jean M. Malouf, Marilyn M. Adams, Kathryn M. Conlin, Marsha M. Walker, Richard Kent Milligan, James Keith Milligan (deceased) and Ronald Dean Milligan


I was the third of five children, having one sister and three brothers. I was born toward the end of World War I when the world was in a state of great confusion and in great need of both material and spiritual blessings.

The eldest child in our family, my sister Rose, was a great help to our parents and a good influence in the lives of us younger children.

Since our parents had left England and all relatives, we grew up without grandparents, aunt, uncles or cousins. However we did have some of our father’s cousins who were good substitutes for the aunts we didn’t have. We also had good neighbors and always a caring bishop and conscientious teachers in the public schools.

During my teen years was the great depression. I suppose we were considered to be poor at least in material goods. Many of the very rich had lost their material wealth. During those years I worked at the canning factory, picked fruit, tended children etc., to help with the costs of school clothes and books.

I enjoyed school and after graduating from Davis High School in Kaysville, I attended USU in Logan, Utah. At that time it was called the Utah State Agricultural College. Those were four interesting years. I studied hard, met many good friends and had fun. It was there that I met my husband to be. I graduated in 1940 with a BS degree.

During my college years and World War II and before marriage, I worked at USU Extension Service, Kaysville Post Office, SLC Deseret Book, did typing and filing at Hill Field, and taught in the Davis County schools. During World War II I was in the WAVES in N.Y.C. I was a teacher, information clerk etc. At the end of the war I worked in a business office in San Francisco, California.

As for church: I’ve been Relief Society President, Primary President, and I am currently serving in the Oklahoma Tulsa Mission with Horace. (1993)

Stories about
Edna May Prigmore Milligan
….portions of the book by the same title…
written by daughter, Marilyn Adams, December 2004


Mother was born in Farmington, Utah while the family was living there. Her first Bishop, who gave her a name and a blessing on July 8, 1917, was Amasa Clark of the Farmington Ward. Bishop Clark had the distinction of being one of the first children of the first Primary of the Church. Although he was one of the older children at the time, he outlived every member of that first Primary and died at the age of 103.

When Mother was about a year old the Prigmore family moved to Kaysville. They lived on the Simmons Farm for about a year and then moved into the Blood home opposite the Kaysville meetinghouse. During the year they lived there, Eugene was born.

The Prigmore family bought the home at 620 West Center Street in about 1922. It is referred to as the old Barton Home. Mother would have been about 5 years old. The home sat back from the road about 50 yards. It was located 120 feet east of the Union Pacific railroad track. Uncle Gene says they heard every screeching freight and passenger train that went through. As a child, I remember being in the upstairs where there was a door at the end of the hall. It opened up but had no porch or anything, just a drop to the ground. I stood there and felt the train shake the house and was sure I would fall out. I don’t think we were supposed to open the door.

The white, two story frame house with a green roof was north and a little west of the old Kaysville Cannery and Kaysville-Layton Milling Company (now owned by the Church and called ‘Deseret Milling). There was always a nice garden out back and a shed or barn-type building.

Although the street was West Center, it was not a main street. If I remember correctly, there were just a few houses on that street, theirs being the last one before crossing the tracks. It was more like a country lane. It was a very rural area. The entire population of Kaysville when Mother was a teenager was 800.

When the freeway was built (I’m guessing in the late 50’s or maybe 1960) it came through Kaysville and divided their home from the town. The highway was just east of the house. Today, their house is the only one still standing on their street, and the whole area is a built up industrial area.

The Prigmore children slept upstairs in their home. On the main floor, the living room was on the west, an “add-on” kitchen was on the east, with the “parlor” or main gathering room in the center. I don’t know what it was like in the early years, but I think they only had an outhouse. The bathroom as I remember it was also an “add-on,” east of the “parlor.” There was a small bedroom off the parlor to the south where Grandma and Grandpa slept. Even as a child, I remember the rooms being very small and the house being “crooked.” The upstairs was not level and had old linoleum on the floors.

Kathy’s note: [Upon entering the front door there was a tiny little entry. I still remember laying on my stomach in that entry with a piece of paper and a pencil that Grandma had given me. I was about 4 years old. It was the first time I had written my name by myself and I was really proud of myself. I think there was a little telephone stand in the entry. I remember Prigmore family Christmas parties in the living room when we were really young. I loved to shake the little “snow globe” that was in the living room as it fascinated me. The stairs leading to the bedrooms went straight forward and up from the entry. I thought the upstairs of the house was spooky and I worried about the creaky floors giving way. We might have stayed there one time. I know Dad used to say he spent one night there and that was one night too many. In the parlor just in front of the bathroom door there was an ‘under the floor’ radiator-type heating system with a grill on it. It was fun to stand over it. The hot air would make our dresses billow out. The bathroom had a distinct aroma to it, probably from the strong smelling, ever- present green soap, maybe “Lifebuoy” brand. It seems Grandpa had his razor and soap container with the brush used for lathering his face in there too. The parlor had some cupboards or a hutch of some sort on the south wall. They contained dishes, glassware, and lots of treasures and “junk” that Grandma saved…rubber bands, string, little balls of yarn, pencils with erasers on them that had gone hard etc. There was another little narrow lean-to “add-on” on the north where Grandpa used to putter around. The table in the parlor always had an oil cloth table covering. I could go on and on…oh the memories!]

Mother used to talk about their neighbor. I think her name was Mrs. Waite. I believe she was a great neighbor. Mother talked about playing there and Ron wondered if it was there that she learned to play the piano. Kathy recalls that Mrs. Waite had a few “prophetic” dreams…anyway some of her dreams came true or “foretold” of an upcoming event.

The Prigmore family was poor by our standards. Grandpa was employed as a gardener at Lagoon. He also worked at Miller Floral Company, McDonald’s Chocolate Roof Gardens and at the Naval Supply Depot in their greenhouses. He loved working with plants. All of Mother’s teenage years were during the depression. I recall Mother and Dad talking about the depression once. Dad said it really wasn’t as bad as people said. Mother got really stern and said he just had NO idea how hard those times were.

It was during the depression sometime in the 1930’s that Grandpa was without work for a period of time. He was up on a ladder and put his glasses down. He stepped on them and broke them. It was just the last straw. Although he had poor eyesight, he had to go without glasses for quite a period of time.

Aunt Leola told me that the children used to walk along the railroad tracks to pick up coal that had fallen off the train. They used it to heat their home.

Uncle Gene recalls a Christmas where they had no money for a tree, so they cut branches off the hedge and used that for a Christmas tree. At other times Mother talked about her brothers walking all the way to the mountains to the east to cut a Christmas tree and dragged it back home in the snow. They were very young and it took them all day.

All of the Prigmore children had odd jobs they did for people around the neighborhood doing yard work, housework, milking cows, taking care of children, picking fruit, working in the cannery, etc. The money they earned was to help with the cost of clothing, school books, and other expenses. Mother often talked about working at the cannery doing whatever produce was in season. Mother worked many summers in the beans and I have yet to see anyone that can snip beans as fast as she can. Her hands just fly. Uncle Gene is just two years younger than Mother and says that he spent many a day working at the cannery in his early teens for 27 cents an hour. In the summer of 1936 when he was 17, he made $125.00 and thought he had made a fortune. When the government inspectors came in the front door to enforce the child labor laws, they would yell and all the kids would run out the back door. Mother worked long hours in the summer which was against the child labor laws. Gene also talks about working on Earl Waite’s farms doing odd jobs, thinning and hoeing beets, raking hay and cleaning out ditches. He says that they all did a lot of hard labor for stingy wages in those depression years and the stingy people who they worked for were always telling them to be thankful.

In the short history Mother wrote in 1973 on her life she said, “As I look back now these were years (speaking of her childhood in Kaysville) spent mostly in school and work. I, along with the children of that day, was willing to work in the fields picking beans, peas, cucumbers and all kinds of fruits for marketing or working long hours at the canning factory during summer months plus baby tending and housework. Money was scarce, and the depression was in full swing during my early youth. For recreation we swam in the creek in the summer and skated on natural ice ponds in winter. We often went to Lagoon, Liberty Park, Ogden and Salt Lake City by way of the Bamberger Railroad.”

The Prigmores kept a cow. One day Mother’s brothers were playing around with a gun and a shot went through the shed, killing their cow. Uncle Gene says, “Oh, Pa was mad!”

I remember Mother saying how she didn’t have money for anything when she attended the AC (Agricultural College—now Utah State University). One time her Mother sent her some butter in the mail. “Oh what a treat”. It was like a delicacy.

Still today, Mother is very compassionate to people, especially children who don’t have much. Just visiting not long ago, she showed me her 4 or 5 pair of shoes she wears and asked me if I would please take them and give them to children that needed shoes.

I remember many times Mother saying that when she thinks of the hard life her Mother had, she could just cry. As an adult, she tried to help them whenever she could. I remember when she arranged and paid for a new kitchen floor. She was always having dresses made for Grandma as she was hard to fit as she got older because she was short and round.

Their entire life, Grandpa and Grandma never spent much money. They were very frugal. One of the few times they did spend some money on themselves was when they returned to their native England in 1955. Grandma had always longed to return. She missed England and her family there.

I know when Grandpa passed away, Mother was shocked how much money he had in savings. She was sorry that they hadn’t spent some of it to make their life more comfortable and a little easier.

Grandpa and Grandma never owned a car or drove one. I am not sure why, but it was probably because of financial reasons. The family walked everywhere they went. The high school was a mile and a half walk each way which each of the children walked everyday for four years. Later Mother’s brothers had a car.

Mother talked a lot about riding the Bamberger Railway. It was an electric interurban railroad that ran from Ogden to Salt Lake. I am sure that is how Grandpa got to work, and on occasion the family or Grandma would ride it into Salt Lake City or Ogden. In a letter Grandpa wrote about the birth of their first child Rose, he talks about how when the labor went for a couple of days and Grandma was in tremendous pain, still no baby arrived. They had to put her on the Bamberger in order to get her to the hospital. At first the local doctor suggested that they call a doctor from Bountiful, but later thought the hospital in Salt Lake would be better. That decision was made Saturday night, but they had to wait until the first train on Sunday morning to get her to Salt Lake. I can’t imagine taking a train after being labor for over two days. She would have been so weak and in so much pain. Kathy’s note: Grandpa always told me what a very difficult time Grandma had during childbirth. Then when I was expecting my first child, he told me he was really worried because he felt I might go through some of the same difficulties. Although I never thought so, other than being short and round, he said I was built like Grandma. I did have a bad time of it, but the doctors decided to do a c-section. If Grandma would have had her babies in modern times, I am sure she would have also had her five children cesarean.

The Prigmore children had only four first cousins who lived in England. They were the children of their mother’s sister Rose and her husband Jack Fletcher. The cousin’s names were Bertha (called Bindy), Dorothy, Kathleen, and Arthur James (Jim). Mother and her sister and brothers also had a grandfather (James Windross) and step-grandmother in England. Grandpa and Grandma would talk about their families in England all the time and even though they hadn’t met them face to face, they knew a lot about them. They corresponded by letter. Mother has copies of letters her grandfather sent her and Rose over the years. Most encouraged them to work hard in school and comments on what they had learned or their penmanship. He also displayed a faith in God.

Because Mother really had no immediate relatives except her Dad’s Uncle James Smith, she said the people that they were closest to her were her teachers. She said, “We also had good neighbors and always a caring bishop and conscientious teachers in the public schools.”

Mother had to deliver some milk from the cow to some people on the way to school. She would carry the milk in a bottle. She didn’t have any gloves to keep her hands warm in the winter and her hands would get so cold carrying the milk they would hurt and she would cry. When she got to school her hands still hurt so much that the principal would sit and hold her hands and rub them until they warmed up. Mother also used to talk about walking to school in the winter with the snow frozen so solid that they could walk over the fences. Once on the way to school they found a frozen cat.

Kathy remembers a story about Mother being in a barn. They were playing in a hay loft and a pitch fork went into her foot. It seems she used to show us a white scar she still had from the accident.

Both Kathy and I remember a story about someone having their tonsils out on the kitchen table by a doctor who came to the home. Whether it was for Mother or a sibling, we can’t remember.

The Prigmore family belonged to the Kaysville First Ward which met in the old Kaysville Tabernacle. In Mother’s scrapbook she has a “Certificate of Promotion” to the Third Grade of the Kaysville Religion Class of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. At the time she was almost eight years old.

Mother was baptized a member of the Church on May 3, 1925 just the day after her 8th birthday. She was baptized in the Kaysville First Ward Chapel by Clarence B. Stewart, an Elder and confirmed the same day by John. F. Meldrum, a High Priest.

Mother also has a “Junior Seminary Certificate.” She received it in the 7th grade. She had just turned 14. They had religion classes at school where they received a certificate of promotion. Mother taught Junior Sunday School in her ward.

Mother went to the Kaysville Public Schools. She enjoyed school and did fairly well. She graduated from Davis High School on May 22, 1936 with a graduating class of 252. I don’t know why, but she was 19 years old when she graduated. She also graduated from the John R. Barnes Latter-day Saint Seminary that year.

In the fall she enrolled in Utah State Agricultural College in Logan, Utah. It was a longer ride between Logan and Kaysville than it is today. Of course there was no freeway and they could take the old highway. It went all along the old mountain road you can still see today driving through the Dry Lake area in Sardine Canyon. She could only go home for a visit when she could get a ride with someone. In her papers is a letter she wrote to Rose saying she was able to catch a ride home with someone that lived in Bountiful. For a trade she gave them her activity card to get in the football game and then she worried that she would get caught and lose her card.

Mother says in her brief history, “Those were four interesting years where I studied hard, met many good friends and had fun.” I know at one time she lived in an apartment at 518 East 4th North. She used to talk about walking up “Old Main Hill.” She often mentioned a good friend named Edith Barton, later to be Edith Carroll. Another friend of hers was Ione Andres. Her sister later taught Jean in the 6th Grade. On her transcript it shows she attended Fall, Winter and Spring quarters for the 1936-37, 1937-38 and 1938-39 school years and the Fall and Winter Quarters for the 1939-40 school year. She received a BS degree with a major in Physiology and public Health and a minor in English and Zoology.

During her college years she worked at a number of places including the USU Extension Service, Kaysville Post Office and the Salt Lake City Deseret Book.

From 1940 to 1942 Mother taught school at the Clearfield and Kaysville Grade Schools. She received a temporary certificate in order to get the jobs. I think she taught in the 2nd and 3rd grades.

In her records is a registration at the University of Idaho in Moscow for the summer session in 1941. She enrolled there in order to get a high school teaching certificate. She already had a certificate for teaching high school in Utah, but openings in the secondary schools were scarce at that time.

In the summer of 1942 when World War II was in full swing, Mother was hired as a typist at Hill Field Air Force Base in Clearfield, Utah. The salary was much more than what she had received for teaching school.

During the time she spent in Davis County teaching school she enjoyed her nephew, Donny Prigmore (her brother Jim’s son). He was the only niece or nephew for several years. Kathy recalls Mother saying something about taking Donny to see the movie “Bambi.” It seems he cried in the movie and she thought the story might have been too sad or upsetting to him.

Sometime in the 1943 time frame Mother joined the WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service). There is a picture in her scrapbook of her on top of the Empire State Building and it is dated September 1943. She was 26 years old. I don’t know why she decided to quit teaching school and join the WAVES, nor do I remember her ever talking much about this period of her life. Whenever there was a movie or book about World War II, she was never interested in seeing the movie or reading the book. She would say that she had lived through that period of time and didn’t want to go back to it. She did tell us that she was in the WAVES, lived in New York City (I think Brooklyn) and that Aunt Rose got a job in New York and lived with her. Rose worked for the Columbia Broadcasting Company, General Cable, and the Bell Telephone Laboratories. Mother taught corps school at the US Navy Hospital in Brooklyn, New York and also did clerical work. In one place she writes that she was an information clerk.

The WAVES was a unit of the US Naval Reserve. As World War II was heating up, a bill was passed in Congress in July 1942 authorizing it’s’ organization. The Navy attempted to lure the brightest women and to utilize them in all lines of work. A recruiting brochure boasted, “It’s a proud moment when you first step out in brand new Navy blues! The trim uniform was especially designed…to flatter every figure and to make you look and feel your best!” A year later in 1943 27,000 women wore this WAVES uniform. Mother was one of them. Her mother mentions that Mother served in the WAVES for three years, but I think it must not have been much over two years.

I thought it was during this time that Mother took up playing the violin. Marsha thinks she might have taken a few lessons when she was in college, but took from an elderly gentleman in New York. She got her violin from him. I thought she told how she had played her violin in Carnegie Hall, but Marsha thinks that the man had played there, but probably not Mother.

Leola tells the story that when Rose and Mother were in New York they decided one day to splurge and buy a brick of ice cream. When they got home and sliced it, there was a mouse in the middle of it.

Mother writes, “We had many good times together (speaking of Rose) going to stage plays, seeing the Hill Cumorah, and witnessing the building of the famous ship Queen, Elizabeth. I met many interesting people. Some were famous ones like Eleanor Roosevelt and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.”

The following is a letter from Edna in New York City, to her parents in Kaysville, at the end of the war. This was a five page handwritten letter.

8/15/45
Dear Mama and Papa,
So much has happened so fast and so furious of late in the past week that I’m not quite sure whether or not I’m awake or just dreaming.
The end of the war and the exciting events leading up to it are never to be forgotten. Ever since the first news of the first atomic bomb, the people of New York have drifted around like bombs themselves awaiting a spark to explode them. Last evening after a week of intense waiting the good news came over the radio at about 7:05 o’clock and New York simply went mad.
Rose and I got home around six. We turned on the radio immediately but didn’t expect to hear any too favorable news because of the word we had heard in the afternoon informing us that the Emperor’s first note to Switzerland had not been enlightening.
But at 6 o’clock the atmosphere was changing. Rose and I stayed glued to the radio and when the final news came we dashed around like mad and got up to Times Square. So did everybody else. The factory whistles blew (many of them out where we live), the subway trains screamed at every station and church bells rang. All street cars and automobiles detoured around the square. There wasn’t room for the people let alone anything else. For twelve blocks the streets were packed with yelling, screaming people. Rose and I pushed ourselves through the streets about 8 o’clock and finally found ourselves in the middle of the square. We went up in the Bell Telephone’s Servicemen’s Lounge and got a good view of the swarming beehive of people below. In about 20 to 30 minutes we went back into the street again to fight our way up Broadway. And it was a fight. It was a sight to see and we would have stayed longer but there were so many silly service boys so determined to kiss the girls and especially the ones in uniform that it became unbearable. I was becoming a little doubtful that I’d make it out in one piece.
This morning Rose decided that she rated two days off according to the radio. Now that she’s been home all day she decided that it was for government workers only. Oh well, I suppose we will all be getting canned soon.
I went to work this morning but at 10:30 we were told to go home and not come back ‘til Fri. morning.
Now the important problem that is facing me at this point is concerning the point system that was announced over the radio this afternoon on the release of naval personnel. I need 29 points for release and it so happens that I have exactly 29 points at this date. You see it’s not the points that are the problem with me. I can’t make up my mind whether to ask for release immediately or to stay in a couple more months ‘til I get finances settled etc. And again I don’t know whether they will release me on account that most everyone is new in our office and it might be necessary that I stay and help out for awhile. But if I arrive home as a civilian in another week, don’t be surprised. Happy day.
Wally and Gene will have to have 44 points to be released. Wally gets ½ point for every year of his age making 11 points plus ½ point for every month in the service. This gives him 29 points. He like thousands of others won’t get out at that rate for a long time. But you see they will lower them and I’m sure he will come home now for sure. Anyway the war is over and you won’t have to worry about the fighting part of it.
I’ll be seeing you.
Love,
Edna

I can’t find any record of anything that shows when she got out of the WAVES, but in 1945-46 she taught at Stoker Grade School in Davis County for a few months and then finished off the school year teaching English at the Bountiful Junior High.

In June of 1946 Mother enrolled at the University of California in Berkeley in order to teach in the California schools, but shortly found out the course she was taking would not help towards a certificate. She dropped out and found employment in a payroll office for Longshoremen in San Francisco. She was able to learn how to operate several business machines while working there. Kathy remembers her saying she used to carry a money bag full of cash some distance along the streets in the dark to make a night deposit. I remember her telling us that one time a man started following her. She was afraid so she turned into a restroom where she stayed for a while. When she left, he was gone. She said after she thought how stupid that was, because when she got into the restroom, she was the only one there and there was nothing to stop him from coming in and doing whatever. During this time she lived in Oakland and commuted to work in San Francisco each day.

In Mother’s papers is a teaching contract for Davis County for the 1946-47 school year for $1800 in 10 equal payments beginning October 1, 1946. She obviously decided not to accept this contract as she was still living in California at the beginning of that school year and also got married that fall.

Mother talked about seeing Dad at church in the Oakland Ward. He had been a dentist on Mare Island during the war, serving in the Navy, and he was still stationed there. She remembered him from some biology classes and labs some years before at the USAC in Logan. They began dating or as Mother says, “immediately became very friendly and soon were talking of marriage plans.” In September Dad returned to Logan to look for a dental office to set up a private practice and to buy a car. At that time he sent a telegram to Mother that said: Dear Edna, I’m having a good time but haven’t found an office or a new car as yet. I’ll look a few more days before returning. Be good and do let me hear from you. Please excuse the delay. With love, H.J.

It was on Halloween night, October 31, 1946 that Mother and Dad were engaged. I remember the story that Dad parked under a street light and gave Mother a diamond. As soon as he did, all the lights in the whole area went out. Dad used to tell the story that as soon as he gave her the diamond, Mother broke into sobs and cried. Apparently she had misrepresented her age to him. She was 29 years old, a full four years older than he was.

This seemed to be important enough to them that just three weeks later, on November 19, 1946 they applied for their marriage license in Box Elder County so their ages would not appear in the local paper in Logan. Dad had been released from the Navy the first week of November.

Mother wrote a note home to her parents. At the top of the letter it had written: Oct. 31, 1946 – Halloween. It said, “Dear All, I just received a diamond this evening. Officially – I’m engaged. We are flying home Tues. 5/46. ‘Will go through to Logan. See you Wed. Love, Edna

Horace James Milligan and Edna May Prigmore were married on November 20, 1946 in the Salt Lake Temple because the Logan Temple was closed at the time. It was a very snowy day. I have never before paid attention to the fact that Mother received her own endowments 3 ½ years earlier, on February 10, 1943, probably just prior to her entering the WAVES.

Kathy found a registration at the USAC in the name of Mrs. Edna Milligan and address of 314 East 2nd South, Logan (Grandma Ruby and Grandpa John Milligan’s home). We were not aware that she went back to school after her marriage.

I think Mother had a fairly happy childhood, but things were not easy. She met her trials with courage and managed them as best as she could. I remember her saying how some people would like to go back and live their childhood again. She said there was no way she wanted to do that. She didn’t want to have to make all the same mistakes again and go through all of that. She was just glad she had progressed as far as she had.

This concludes the history of Edna May Prigmore Milligan up to and including her marriage.